Insane Clown President

Trump Blames His "Friend" Xi Jinping for Sabotaging the Kim Jong Un Summit

After that second meeting with Xi this month, Kim Jong Un suddenly moved back to the dark side in his dealings with the United States.
By GORDON G. CHANG

Donald Trump met his South Korean counterpart in the White House on Tuesday, publicly acknowledged his planned summit with Kim Jong Un may never take place, and called out China’s ruler for sabotaging the denuclearization process.
It was about time the American leader recognized his North Korea policy was hitting roadblocks.
Just past noon, Trump faced the press with Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, who flew in from Asia for a meeting that initially was scheduled for only two hours. 

“This time last week, Moon was coming here with the intention of trying to heavily script what Trump would do in his meeting with Kim,” Victor Cha, senior Asia director for George W. Bush’s National Security Council, told The Washington Post. 

“Now, he’s coming here just to try to save the summit. The mission has really changed.”
Last week, the North Koreans, who this year gave the impression they had turned over a new leaf, began acting like North Koreans again. 

They abruptly canceled high-level talks with Seoul, scheduled for last Wednesday, and cast doubt on their willingness to meet with Trump in Singapore on June 12. 

They cited their displeasure with long-scheduled joint military exercises and with John Bolton, Trump’s new national security adviser.
Moon has since tried to alleviate Kim Jong Un’s concerns, withdrawing, for instance, from the Blue Lightning air-training exercise with the United States and Japan this month. 

Seoul’s tactics have not worked to mollify the Kim regime, however.
Now, analysts want to know what caused the North’s return to the dark side, which took senior Trump officials by complete surprise. 

But the new hostility should have been anticipated. 

It was evident that Xi Jinping, whom Trump called a “friend” yesterday, put the North Koreans up to their new bristling posture.
Trump, in his wide-ranging comments made in the Oval Office with Moon at his side, picked on the Chinese for mischief-making. 

“I will say I’m a little disappointed, because when Kim Jong Un had the meeting with Xi, in China, the second meeting—the first meeting we knew about—the second meeting—I think there was a little change in attitude from Kim Jong Un,” Trump said. 

“So I don’t like that. I don’t like that.”
Nor should he. 

Xi obviously has been up to no good. 

In addition to openly violating U.N. sanctions in recent months, Xi has been schooling Kim in the art of defiance of the international community, especially the United States. 

That second Xi-Kim meeting—held May 7 and 8 in the Chinese city of Dalian—preceded North Korea’s return to bad behavior.
It took some time for Trump to recognize what was going on, but he evidently lost patience with the Chinese at the beginning of this week. 

On Monday morning, Trump took to Twitter to criticize Beijing. 

“China must continue to be strong & tight on the Border of North Korea until a deal is made,” the president warned. 

“The word is that recently the Border has become much more porous and more has been filtering in.”
The “porous” comment is an understatement. 

Over the last two months, China’s sanctions enforcement has markedly deteriorated. 

Moreover, Beijing has ramped up support for the North Korean economy. 

In the last few weeks, for instance, gas and diesel prices in the northern part of North Korea have fallen dramatically, which could not have happened unless China had been pumping substantially more oil into the North through its pipeline.
Beijing says it wants North Korea to denuclearize, but most of all it does not want to be left out of decision-making affecting the region. 

“China’s biggest nightmare is North Korea having a closer relationship with the United States and South Korea than it does with China,” prominent China-watcher Bonnie Glaser of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told The Washington Post.
Yes, Xi Jinping has been trying to convince Trump—and Moon—that every plan to denuclearize North Korea runs through the Chinese capital. 

Xi apparently got Kim to act up to create a need to consult Beijing—how else to explain the sequence of events this month?—but this cynical plan can blow up in Xi’s face.
Trump has, for a year, been publicly saying he is willing to go easy on trade issues with China if Beijing is helpful on North Korea. 

He repeated this theme Tuesday in his chat with the press.
“When I think of trade with China, I’m also thinking about what they’re doing to help us with peace with North Korea,” Trump said. 

“That’s a very important element.”
But what happens to Trump’s treatment of Chinese trade issues when he thinks Beijing is not helping? 

Many have commented that what Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin terms the “very comprehensive framework” for a China trade deal looks unsatisfactory. 

In short, the framework rewards America with little to which it was not already entitled and grants China large rewards, among them sanctions relief for ZTE Corp., the embattled Chinese telecom-equipment maker, and a decision not to impose tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 for stealing American intellectual property. 

Many analysts say, based on the 2017 update to the IP Commission Report (PDF), that China’s theft amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Some may think the generous Trump position on trade is the price for Beijing’s help to defang the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. 

If Trump, however, thinks the Chinese are standing in the way of a NoKo settlement, he could take an especially tough attitude on trade.
Two China crises—one on North Korea and the other on trade—are intersecting, and feeding off each other. 

They both could escalate fast.

Donald Trump is a moron

Trump hails China's North Korea envoy as 'big move' but experts doubtful
By Ben Westcott

Donald Trump has hailed the Chinese government sending an envoy to North Korea Friday as a "big move" in the wake of his five-country trip to Asia.
In a Tweet late Thursday, Trump appeared to suggest it could lead to developments in the nuclear standoff on the Korean peninsula.
"China is sending an envoy and delegation to North Korea - A big move, we'll see what happens!" Trump said.
The US leader has just finished a two-week tour of Asia, including a stop in Beijing, during which he called for greater diplomatic pressure to be put on North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.
Song Tao, head of the International Liaison Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, is due to arrive in North Korea on Friday, state news agency Xinhua reported Wednesday. 

It's the first time a senior official has made a public visit to North Korea this year.
Tong Zhao, a fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing, said the visit was unlikely to be an attempt to strong arm Pyongyang over its nuclear program.
Officially the visit is about party to party ties. 

Song will inform the North Korean Workers' Party of the outcome of China's 19th Party Communist Party Congress in October, where Xi Jinping was given a second term as leader.
"It has become a sort of routine for the Chinese Communist Party to send a special envoy to its fellow communist and socialist countries to brief them on China's Party Congress," he said.
"China did so after the conclusion of the 2007 and 2012 party congresses, so this is not really unusual."
Zhao, however, said it was "very likely" the North Korea nuclear program would come up as part of their discussions.

Repairing ties
John Delury, associate professor at the Yonsei University Graduate School of International Studies in Seoul, said China would take the temperature of North Korea's ruling elite and reopen communication channels apparently shut as ties had soured.
"Everyone's looking for a breakthrough on the impasse over the nuclear missile program and obviously that's part of the mix but ... the main focus is on improving the Xi, Kim channel somewhat and seeing what can be done," he said.

There were indications in early November the two formerly close allies were working to repair ties, when Xi wrote to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to "promote the relations between the two parties."
"Even just at a basic level of getting a sense of where Kim Jong Un is at and what are the possibilities," said Delury. 

"We're in the very delicate stage and you need to get a read, you need to have lots of conversations. The Chinese channel is one of them."
Zhao said there was unlikely to be any major breakthrough during the Pyongyang visit on reining in North Korea's nuclear program: "It could well be routine exchange of their long standing positions."
Delury said it would be key to monitor how Song is received by the North Koreans and who he meets:
"The way that the North Koreans report the visit, who he meets, and the tone of the reporting will tell us something about whether it was positive and some progress made, or whether it was a surly exchange," he said.

Axis of Evil

Xi Jinping Grapples With Rising Cost of Backing Kim Jong Un
Bloomberg News

It’s getting harder for Xi Jinping to maintain support for wayward ally North Korea.
For weeks, Xi has been caught in the middle as leader Kim Jong Un lobbed intercontinental ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan and Donald Trump vented his frustration with warnings of “fire and fury.”
China has urged calm while backing tighter sanctions against North Korea to ward off U.S. threats of punitive tariffs and military strikes.
The prospect of nuclear war has sparked a debate in Beijing about maintaining support for the Kim dynasty, which dates back to the Korean War in the 1950s.
The two countries have grown apart over the decades, with China opening up to become the world’s second-biggest economy while North Korea has become more isolated and impoverished.
While China officially wants a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, Beijing has long tolerated North Korea’s weapons program because it sees the collapse of Kim’s regime as a greater strategic threat. That could lead to U.S. troops on its border aligned with a unified Korea, eliminating the buffer that North Korea now provides -- along with its regular threats against common enemies.
Yet China’s rise on the world stage has given it a bigger stake in maintaining global stability, not least to keep up economic growth rates that underpin the Communist Party’s grip on power.
China is also concerned that new missile defense systems in South Korea and Japan could counter its own military capabilities, and that those countries may one day seek their own nuclear weapons to deter North Korea.
“I don’t know where the breaking point for Beijing is yet, but my view is that China is gradually, but clearly, moving toward a tipping point,” said Zhu Feng, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Nanjing University, without elaborating on what that would entail.
“Every provocative move by the Kim regime pushes China a little further from North Korea, and the distance between two countries has become great.”
The Communist Party-affiliated Global Times has provided a glimpse into what a Chinese shift might look like.
During heightened tensions in April, it said China should consider cutting off oil imports.
An editorial on Friday said that China should stay neutral if North Korea starts a war with a missile attack, but intervene if the U.S. and South Korea seek to topple Kim’s regime.
“China opposes both nuclear proliferation and war in the Korean Peninsula,” the editorial said.
“It will not encourage any side to stir up military conflict, and will firmly resist any side which wants to change the status quo of the areas where China’s interests are concerned.”
The editorial was an exception in China’s tightly controlled media, where the tensions had been buried under reports about an earthquake in Sichuan and a U.S. Navy challenge to Chinese territorial claims.
North Korea didn’t make the top 50 trending topics on the Twitter-like Weibo, even as the situation dragged down markets around the world.
Shortly after Trump tweeted that military solutions were “locked and loaded,” Xi told him in a call that all sides should avoid inflammatory comments while agreeing the Korean Peninsula should be denuclearized.
The White House said that Trump looked forward to visiting China this year, and called his relationship with Xi “extremely close.”
China and Russia both backed harsher United Nations sanctions earlier this month that cut North Korea’s roughly $3 billion in exports by about one-third.
The deal excluded oil imports -- the biggest economic lifeline for Kim’s regime -- and it stopped the U.S. from leveling penalties on Chinese banks that handle North Korean cash, at least for now.
“U.S.-China frictions will rise again when UN sanctions fail to change North Korean behavior,” said Andrew Gilholm, director of North Asia analysis at Control Risks Group.
“Kim seems determined to get to the point where it’s impossible for the U.S. to deny it’s a nuclear state. He may be in a hurry to get there before tighter sanctions kicks in, and he wants to force U.S. acceptance of his regime.”

Freeze Frustration
China, which fought alongside its neighbor in the Korean War, provides most of the isolated country’s food and fuel imports.
North Korea has increasingly rebelled against its longtime benefactor, criticizing its cooperation with the U.S. and rebuffing diplomatic overtures from Beijing.
Xi hasn’t held a summit with Kim since taking power in late 2012.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has argued that the sanctions would help get North Korea to the negotiating table.
For months, China has pushed a “suspension-for-suspension” proposal, in which North Korea would halt further nuclear and missile tests in return for the U.S. and South Korea stopping joint military exercises in the region.
North Korea has expressed an openness to talks only if the U.S. first gives up its “hostile" policies. The U.S. wants Kim to be prepared to give up his nuclear weapons -- a prospect that many analysts view as unlikely since Kim sees them as essential to his survival.
China is frustrated because it sees its freeze proposal as the best way forward, according to Yang Xiyu, a former negotiator for China in the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program that collapsed in 2009.

Geopolitical Game
“It’s relatively easy to carry out because it only needs both sides to make a political decision,” he said.
“If the Americans & Co. don’t accept it, they can come up with a better proposal and we will be all ears. But do they have one?”
For China, North Korea is just one of several strategic concerns in its relationship with the U.S., in addition to arms sales to Taiwan and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
Even if Beijing has grown weary of Kim’s brinkmanship, it hasn’t shown that it’s ready to surrender the larger geopolitical game to the U.S.
“North Korea is a burden to China, but it doesn’t mean China would go against Kim Jong Un,” said Song Guoyou, director of Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.
“The two parties and nations have a deep and intertwined relationship and that can’t be changed overnight.”

Trump and Xi: The honeymoon is over

By John Pomfret 

Freaks: Trump with Xi Jinping during a bilateral meeting at Mar-a-Lago in West Palm Beach, Fla., on April 6.

Is Trump’s surprisingly friendly start in relations with China coming to an end? 

Relations with Beijing appear destined for rocky times unless China begins to modify some of its long-standing policies.

On North Korea, over the past week, the Trump administration has put China on notice that its efforts to reign in Kim Jong Un’s nuclear ambitions are not enough. 

In a tweet earlier this week, Trump, in classic passive-aggressive mode, said, “While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried!” 

On Wednesday that was followed up by a press conference with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. 

Tillerson reiterated that China has “a diplomatic responsibility to exert much greater economic and diplomatic pressure on the regime if they want to prevent further escalation in the region.” 

These statements came not simply after a series of North Korean missile tests, but also following the North Korean regime’s incarceration and killing of U.S. citizen Otto Warmbier.
This week, the Trump administration also dismissed suggestions by China and South Korea for a freeze on U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises in exchange for a North Korean freeze on its nuclear and missile tests. 

This idea has been criticized by practically every American analyst on all sides of the political spectrum. 

A similar deal was tried in 2005, and North Korea broke the deal in 2006. 

So it’s no coincidence that North Korea still supports it. 

Indeed, also on Wednesday, North Korea’s ambassador to India, Kye Chun-yong, said his country was willing to consider such a freeze.
Trump’s next step is anyone’s guess, but it’s clear that the administration is considering what none of his predecessors had dared to do — penalizing the numerous Chinese companies that are violating U.N. sanctions on North Korea and facilitating its nuclear-weapons program. 

Over the course of the Obama administration, only one such Chinese company was sanctioned.
Problems are also simmering when it comes to Taiwan. 

Before Barack Obama left office, the State Department had prepared an arms sales package to the island, but it had yet to be finalized. 

Wanting to gauge China’s response to North Korea and other issues, the Trump administration had delayed approval. 

With China failing to step up on North Korea, those who back the arms sale within the Trump administration will be emboldened to get this package back on track.
In addition, for years, China has been lobbying the United States to agree to a “fourth communique” on U.S.-China relations. 

The Chinese want to push the United States for a cutoff date for arms sales to Taiwan and to support China’s claim to the island of 23 million people. 

Since 1972, the U.S. position, which successive U.S. administrations have called America’s one-China policy, has been that while it understands that China wants to annex Taiwan, it takes no position on Taiwan’s sovereignty. 

China hopes to change that and earlier this year, Tillerson instructed Brian Hook, the State Department’s director of policy planning, to draw up a memo on the advisability of a fourth communique. 

I’m told the memo laid out the case why a new communique was a horrible idea, a position further strengthened by China’s apparently unwillingness to go the extra mile on North Korea.
Finally, trade and investment issues appear destined to move from the sidelines of the relationship to center stage. 

During the campaign, Trump promised to slap a 45 percent tariff on China’s exports to the United States and to label China a currency manipulator on “day one.” 

Once in office, Trump reversed course and promised better treatment for China if it helped out more on North Korea. 

Now that the prospects for such help appear to be vanishing, a new toughness on the economic side of the relationship is emerging.
Testifying before Congress on Wednesday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer made the case that any decision to label China a “market economy” would have “cataclysmic” consequences for the World Trade Organization. 

The next day, Lighthizer voiced his disapproval of the Ford Motor Company’s announcement that it planned to move production of its Focus model to China and to export the cars back to the United States. 

Lighthizer also told U.S. senators that his office would be intensifying its enforcement action against Chinese businesses in a variety of cases. 

Speaking about China’s efforts to obtain advanced American technology by forcing U.S. companies to share their trade secrets with potential Chinese competitors in exchange for a piece of China’s market, Lighthizer was blunt: “It’s another example of China trying to take control of a critical industry … there is no ‘reciprocity’ at all, as Chinese companies face nothing like this in the U.S.”
Trump’s “let’s make a deal” approach to China provided Beijing with opportunities for significant wins in its relations with the United States. 

But Beijing so far appears unwilling to embrace Trump’s central argument — that the relationship has been skewed in China’s favor for too long and needs to be reworked.